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GPA: Canadian GPA out of 13; UPenn website gave ~3.0 cumulative, 3.2 Major. A professor at Michigan once told me that a lot of American universities make lee-way for the fact that Canadian GPA's are generally lower, I'm not sure how true that is.

GMAT history: Please view scores on the left under my name, quick summary: 640 (M42, V36), 640 (M40, V38), 710 (M42, V45). AWA - 6 consistently. Most significant hurdle for me. I'm almost certainly going to write a 4th time to pull up the math score, get a tutor this time; Duke faculty member has recommended I do the same (what do you say?)

Age: 26 (might be applying for 2013 not 2012, so will be 28 upon entering B-school)

W/E:- Part-time Teachers Assistant in 4th year university (Anatomy, Cellular Biology)- Fulltime (4.5 years by 2012 fall):- First ~2 years: Client servicing role in India, with British company Bates David (Account Executive), promoted in 9 months and joined second french company (Publicis Ambience) as Senior Account Executive.- 1.5 years as of August 2011: Mckinsey & Company - US Healthcare Systems Research Analyst (promoted from Junior RA to RA in 15 months). Now here's my catch, my US team has offered to send me to Costa Rica for a year beginning December 2011, where we are setting up another low cost center and hiring people for the US Healthcare RA role. I would be going there as an unnofficial "mentor" and team lead (I can't get the official designation as I'm still too junior, but my senior has agreed to support this claim when I apply to B-school, I have been honest with the team about my apps). They had one condition, if I accept the Costa Rica stint I will have to defer my B-school apps to 2013 fall (by which time I will have 6+ years work exp total). I have agree to this and will get details soon. I will also have significant experience with consulting teams as I work with them very closely on client projects, and am going to Washington for 2 months to work directly with a client on a consulting team.- Leadership roles:In my second advertising job - managed several trainees under me.Mckinsey RA role - mentoring a colleague here in New Delhi, after Costa Rica goes through I will have significant managerial experience, but not the official designation (I don't know whether the team will consider me for an earlier promotion but its unlikely due to my lack of tenure).

E/C: I rank poorly here. I have taken part in a few chess tournaments, but no awards.Writing: Received Mckinsey India's annual award for best blog this year, also trying to publish an article in a local monthyl magazine on US Healthcare reforms etc. I love to write on the side.Community services: Part of organization committee for Mckinsey's Rotary Club Blood Donation camps, participated in Mckinsey's Social Olympics program, idea was shortlisted but not finalized. Trying to get more involved but waiting for Costa Rica to come through.

Goals:Short term: Consulting role in healthcare domain OR join a large US health insurer in corporate strategy division.Long term: still need to work on this; tentative - come back to India down the line and leverage ideas from American healthcare reform to better our healthcare system.

Schools:This is a tentative list, I want to go for US dual MBA/Masters in Public Health (MPH) degrees so I have an employment edge in one of the few sectors doing well in the US economy: healthcare. I don't know if this is too ambitious.Top Choices with dual offerings (OR healthcare focus): Berkeley Haas, Duke Fuqua, Ross Michigan, ENSEAD (no healthcare)2nd options: but still would love to attend: Carnegie (Tepper), Indian School of Business, Vanderbilt OwenBackups: UNC Kennan, still need to check China/Singapore options.

Note, Wharton/Columbia/Harvard all offer dual MBA/MPH, but I feel these are out of my league and a waste of time. A distant family friend who is a professor at Duke, mentioned that I should include these if I rewrite GMAT a 4th time and pull up my Quant score. He also wants me to look at generalist MBA schools like Booth, Tuck, Yale, Cornell etc.

Any advice you have on what my chances are, what schools I should be considering, what I should do in the coming 2 years, would be invaluable. Thank you!
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Okay,So let's start at the top:Strongest thing you have is your work experience. As you know McKinsey is one of the best places you can have on your resume. so you gotta make the best of that.

Your GMAT is good, even excellent, but there's the genius Indian curve you have to apply to it unfortunately What can you do? Indian candidates work hard and test high!

Now as I've written before in this forum, whether you should take your GMAT or not is at this point a tricky question. Will it mean that you won;t have time to write your applications in round one? How hard would you have to work? to get how much higher? I dunno. From your score history, it looks like you are probably hitting as high as you could, so I'm not sure it's the smartest idea to retake the GMAT yet one more time. You have your very good 710. Your grade has consistently risen, and you have shown good effort. I feel that if you retake now, you are putting yourself at risk of not being able to dedicate the necessary time to the application process, if you see what I mean.

For the Extra Curricular, it's a bit of shame you don't have more.. but there's no point strategizing in the hypothetical, is there?

But your goals and your industry are very good. They line up with your past, they are in a very strong industry, and one which is not only successful, but in which the schools see few applicants, so that helps your chances.

As for your list, if you add UNC (great med program) and Tepper, I would say its about reasonable. And for Asian programs, you might want to look into NUS.

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16 Aug 2011, 23:25

Great, thank you for this advice. Few considerations:GMAT rewrite - statistically, odds are against me pulling up math as you said. I have been in two minds about this. However, I did not get external help on GMAT math earlier. My uncle, a graduate from IIM (top indian B school), will coach me this time on specific areas, building up my confidence (I was consistently scoring in 80-87% in all practice scores, my last 5 Quant test scores were between 45 - 49 for GMAC & Manhattan, but on D-Day my nerves came apart) - and helping me tackle concepts.

So in a nutshell, its not another foolhardy blind attempt, which I don't blame anybody for labeling it as much (all my friends do too!). Also, I'm 90% going to Costa Rica in 2/3 months, after a Washington stint, so anyway I can't apply for 2012 (company has "forbidden" it if I accept CR), which gives me another year to sit around and work on bolstering extra-curriculars in Costa Rica and working on apps. So another GMAT attempt won't detract from my apps.

Do you offer essay/apps consultation in New Delhi? Keeping in mind my going to Costa Rica stint is almost through, wouldn't it be prudent for me to delay essays by a year, since anyway my story will change drastically now?
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Well, if you have another year, that's another thing alltogether. So obviously, you work hard, get your GMAT as high as you can, and talk to us when it's relevant or if you have any other questions.

As for your story changing. The way I look at it is that you should always try and do things to better your candidacy (more volunteering, more leadership, entrepreneurship if possible, etc.) but usually you don;t give up on life stuff for your resume. i.e. you aren't gonna take a terrible job you don;t want for a year just cause it'd look good on your resume ... in fact you don't need to worry about your story changing. If your story changes, then we change your story in the application. There's ALWAYS a way to build a strong narrative.

We have worked with a ton of Indian candidates, actually we've worked from people from everywhere almost, and as far as whether your in India, the US, Costa Rica or Timbuktoo, we can work together.